As consumer products and services have grown more complex, the need to provide support to consumers purchasing these products and services has grown. Traditionally, this support has been provided by live agents over the telephone. A call center is a central location where multiple agents answer telephone calls from consumers looking for support. A business may have several call centers. In addition, a business may hire a company that provides call center services for many business.
Businesses that wish to maintain a call center evaluate the number of calls that will be handled simultaneously in order to determine the number of agents that must be available. To maintain quality, businesses do not want to have customers waiting on hold for extended periods of time. To maintain efficiency, businesses do not want to have agents waiting for calls because maintaining many agents is expensive. Accordingly, it is desirable for a business to reduce the number of agents that are necessary for the call center.
One method for reducing the number of call center agents, is the use of an interactive voice response (IVR) server. An IVR server is often used to answer calls to a call center. The IVR server uses text-to-speech methods to provide an initial interaction with a customer calling the call center. The IVR server is able to gather information about the identity of the customer. In addition, the IVR server can ask the customer which department of the call center they are attempting to contact. The IVR server can then route the call to an agent of the desired department. IVR servers have typically been limited to gathering information and providing simple instructions to customers.